After decades of narrowing, the achievement gap between black and white school children widened in the 1990s a period when the labor market rewards for education were increasing. This presents an important puzzle for economists. In this chapter, I investigate the extent to which economic models...

This paper presents an overview of the socio-economic situation of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI), primarily in OECD countries. After investigating the size of this population, the paper zooms in on attitudes toward LGBTI, LGBTI rights and perceived...

Strong and relevant skills are vital for helping Iceland to adjust to rapidly changing technology and competition in the world economy and safeguard high prosperity and well-being. Many students, especially those with an immigration background, lack solid core skills and competences that weakens...

By allowing for an extensive margin in the standard quantity-quality model, we generate new insights into fertility transitions. We test the model on Southern black women aected by a large-scale school construction program. Consistent with our model, women facing improved schooling opportunities...

Is the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) a measure of achievement or ability? The answer to this question is critical for drawing inferences from studies in which it is employed. In this paper, we test for a relationship between schooling and AFQT performance in the NLSY 79 by comparing...

In previous research, a substantial gap in test scores between White and Black students persists, even after controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics. Using a newly available data set (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), we demonstrate that in stark contrast to earlier...

Affirmative action policies in higher education are used in many countries to try to socially advance historically disadvantaged minorities. Although the underlying social objectives of these policies are rarely criticized, there is intense debate over the actual impact of such preferences in...

The Oaxaca-Blinder technique was originally used in labor economics to decompose earnings gaps and to estimate the level of discrimination. It has been applied since in other social issues, including education, where it can be used to assess how much of a gap is due to differences in...

This article considers the relationship between stature, race, institutional change, and proximity to urban centers during economic development. A new data set of male inmates from the 19th century Philadelphia County prison is introduced to compare black and white statures during...

This paper describes a series of school-based randomized trials in over 250 urban schools designed to test the impact of financial incentives on student achievement. In stark contrast to simple economic models, our results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the rewards are...